Notes (Spring 2018):

Let's begin by keeping our eye on the BIG PICTURE

In a recent article by IIya Pozin he discussed "Simply having a college degree will not get you
hired. We need to break away from this idea. In all reality, most employers could care less about your
GPA or where you went to school." He goes on to make the following points:

Your degree isn’t a golden ticket.

It’s all about experience.

Passion will help you succeed.

Companies hire the person who is certain to cause the most positive impact.

Go the extra mile.

You will need your degree, but you need to distinguish yourself. Read more > > >

Many managers agree that what make people successful are their motivation, drive, and ability to learn from mistakes, and how hard they work.

Why understanding mathematics is essential:

If one does not understand or refuses to deal with mathematics, one has fatally impaired one’s ability
to comprehend the natural sciences, because not only are the ideas of the natural sciences expressed in
mathematical form, but also the relationships among those ideas are established with mathematical
reasoning. It's Time To Start...Ready...Go!

Still not convinced? . . . OK, your goal here is not just to get through this
mathematics course, or even just to get a 'good' grade in this class. You are not in college just to
get 'mostly good' grades, your goal is to further your education and hopefully to become successful
after you graduate college? If you are still reading this paragraph then you should listen to someone
else, someone famous on TV, tell you things that I tell you in class; watch this short (~3 min) video
of Neil deGrasse Tyson (noted American
astrophysicist) being interviewed on CNN.

Several On-line Algebra Resources

ACTION ITEMS:

Bad Habits You Must Eliminate from Your Daily Routine

You are the sum of your habits. When you allow bad habits to take over, they dramatically impede your
path to success. The challenge is bad habits are insidious, creeping up on you slowly until you don’t
even notice the damage they’re causing. READ MORE > > > (by Dr. Travis Bradberry)

Quit Saying 'I'm Just Not a Math Person'

It started with a fairly simple problem. The class of elementary education majors were looking at energy
and efficiency. This course is specifically designed to help these students get a basic understanding of
the nature of science > > >
READ MORE > > > (Quit Saying 'I'm Just Not a Math Person')

Free software is simply software that respects our freedom — our freedom to learn and understand the software we are using. Free software is designed to free the user from restrictions put in place by proprietary software, and so using free software lets you join a global community of people who are making the political and ethical assertion of our rights to learn and to share what we learn with others.

What is all this "open-source"/"Free software"?

Education: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish
and you feed him for a lifetime." READ ON

Software - Open Source

-
LibreOffice is the free power-packed Open Source personal productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and
Linux, that gives you six feature-rich applications for all your document production and data
processing needs: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base. Compatible with all other major
office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute (and much better than that
expensive virus you are probably currently using).

- GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

The R Project for Statistical Computing -
R is a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics.

Patent Absurdity

A new documentary film "Patent Absurdity" is set to expose how the
judicial activism that led to the patenting of software has broken the
US patent system's promise of promoting the progress of science and
useful arts. This has ramifications for students, in the harm being done to software
developers and the wider economy.

Software - Open Source

-
LibreOffice is the free power-packed Open Source personal productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and
Linux, that gives you six feature-rich applications for all your document production and data
processing needs: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base. Compatible with all other major
office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute (and much better than that
expensive virus you are probably currently using).

- GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.

The R Project for Statistical Computing -
R is a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics.